Putting the cat out
AFTER a mountain lion took up residence in her living room, a woman in Oregon claims she used telepathy to persuade it to leave.
In a series of posts on Facebook, Lauren Taylor explained how she 鈥渃onsciously elevated the energy field鈥� to calm the animal, which promptly fell asleep behind her sofa.
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After waiting outside 6 hours for the lion to leave of its own accord, Taylor returned to the living room, communicating with the animal in 鈥渇eline eye blinks鈥� and telepathically describing the exit routes available.
Finally, Taylor and her housemate played the drums until the lion, understandably in Feedback鈥檚 opinion, decided to find somewhere more peaceful to lay down.
Old dogs
NEW ideas emerge, as Max Planck might have put it, at the rate old professors die. Now researchers at the University of Iowa have found that older people are less likely to recognise when they make a mistake.
Or as they delicately put it: 鈥淎 blunted phasic autonomic response to errors indexes age-related deficits in error awareness鈥�.
鈥淭he Associated Press reports: 鈥淢an who jumped out of restaurant freezer and threatened employees with a knife before dying of cardiac arrest was a suspected cold-case killer鈥濃��
The researchers created a simple test in which participants had to look away from an object when it appeared on screen. Young and older groups (with an average age of 22 and 68 respectively) performed the task equally well, but young adults were more willing to admit when they had got it wrong. They were also less confident about the times when they thought they might have got it wrong.
, even the one-third of times when they had. The team says this reduced ability to reflect on our own performance as we age has important ramifications for everything from taking medication to knowing if it is safe to carry on driving.
Feedback notes that 25 per cent of young adults also failed to recognise when they had made a mistake. This tallies with the Dunning-Kruger papers, which famously showed that the lowest-scoring quartile when it comes to humour, grammar and logic also grossly overestimate their own abilities in these areas. Perhaps a universal law is in effect?
Smaug鈥檚 delectation
PEOPLE who eat 鈥渄ragon鈥檚 breath鈥� are playing with fire, doctors have warned. Dragon鈥檚 breath is a novelty food sold at fairs and in malls, made by coating cereal puffs in liquid nitrogen. When you put it in your mouth, the evaporating nitrogen creates the illusion that you are breathing smoke.
However, if pools of nitrogen remain, they can cause serious injury. Emergency physician Reed Caldwell described the results for BuzzFeed News: 鈥淵ou can get first-, second-, third-degree cold burns or it can kill the skin and lead to injury, deformity, and infection.鈥� At least now we know why dragons hoard gold: it is to pay for all the dental bills.
Carry the one
THE most prestigious prize in mathematics, the Fields medal, was awarded to Cambridge professor Caucher Birkar at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, last week.
But minutes later, a rogue subtraction was made, when somebody stole Birkar鈥檚 briefcase. It was found discarded in a nearby pavilion, but the 拢3000 gold medal was missing. Photos of two suspects have been circulated. We can only hope that the police manage to round them up.
Doges in brogues
SWISS police are urging dog owners to buy shoes for their pets to protect their paws during the heatwave. Zurich has been basking in 30掳C heat, and these temperatures can feel more like 50掳C on the ground, police spokesperson Michael Walker told national broadcaster SRF.
Dog owners should check the ground temperature with the back of their hand for 5 seconds to make sure it isn鈥檛 too hot for bare-pawed pooches, Zurich police say. Mad dogs and Englishmen, presumably, are excused.
A nasty bug
FOLLOWING hot on the heels of news that lemurs self-medicate by rubbing half-chewed millipedes on their bums (11 August, p 17), Feedback learns of another multi-legged medicine. Centipedes are traditional Chinese remedies for a variety of ailments. But these particular pill bugs aren鈥檛 without a risk of complications.
A man and a woman in China who complained of headaches were found to have picked up a rat lungworm infection from eating centipedes bought at an agricultural market.
The rat lungworm parasite, which has previously been linked to consumption of snails, can penetrate the brain and spinal cord and lead to meningitis. This is the first time transmission via centipede has been recorded.
Both patients recovered after treatment with an anti-parasite drug. Perhaps in future, these creepy-crawlies should be labelled 鈥渇or external use only鈥�?
Fishy business
BRYN GLOVER writes: 鈥淧lease tell me I must be the 94th person (as Private Eye would put it) to point out the wonderful piece of nominative determinism which occurred in your own pages. Helen Scales, it would seem, is a fish biologist鈥� (14 July, p 42).
We will, Bryn, but only because, coincidentally, you really are the 94th person to bring this to our attention. As the wags at Private Eye might say, 鈥淵ou couldn鈥檛 make it up!鈥�
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